Launched in 2012. Mydesignersales.com is a platform for the upcoming fashion designers, also it displays collections of the renowned fashion designers. Read to know more about the brand.
Bengaluru-based mydesignersales.com started its operations on October 21, 2012, with an objective to provide a platform to all fashion designers to display their designs online. After much research, Vijay Bhaskar, co-founder and CEO, mydesignersales.com discovered that out of the 2,000 students who graduate from well-known fashion institutes every year, not many get an opportunity to start their own labels due to lack of investment.
Bhaskar says, “We thought of creating a market space for upcoming fashion designers to help them with branding their labels. Although we do have some very well established designers in our portal, we noticed that people are open to buying from the other designers but are not aware who the new upcoming designers are. Customers identify only the top, well-known designers like Rohit Bal and Tarun Tahiliani who have a good branding and who are doing really well in the market.”
Started with an initial investment of `40 lakh, mydesignersales.com has been growing at 15 percent year-on-year. Its two founders and their team of eight people, source out to upcoming fashion designers and encourage them to share their collections. These collections are then set on trial with a few customers who give the team a thorough feedback on the collection after which the garments are professionally photographed to be uploaded on the portal.
He explains, “Currently, we have 45 designers on our portal and we try to change the collection every 60 days.” Showcasing designers like Manoviraj Khosla and other well-known names, who would not like to have their collections online for too long, Bhaskar has made the shelf life of a designer garment to 60 days after which more collections are added and designers are asked whether they would like to sell the garment at a discount.
Bhaskar has plans of expanding to 100 designers on his portal in the next six months and cross a turnover of `1 crore in the next one year. The portal reaches out to all across the country and to countries like the US and the UK. The website has tied up with Fedex, Blue Dart and other third-party logistics. Cities like Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata have been contributing the highest in terms of sales. According to Bhaskar, this is probably because people in these cities, especially the people in Delhi, are more fashion conscious and like to try new designerwear. The customers from Delhi readily spend around `40,000 when buying online and most of them prefer CoD (Cash on Delivery). Bhaskar shared that mydesignersales.com has been making a monthly revenue of `3 – `4 lakh. The website currently has a mix of Indo-Western as well as ethnicwear that are priced between `1,000 – `70,000. The margins are around 25 percent and it is usually set depending on the designer.
Targeting the 22–48 age group, Bhaskar noticed that customer behaviour in India has changed a great deal. People are ready to spend but expect to receive their orders the very next day. He points out, “The quicker you deliver, the more happier a customer is. If at any point we fail to deliver the shipment, then either we offer the customer a discount on any of the products or we give them their money back.”
The website has received a lot of demand for ethnicwear from Indians who live in the US and the UK. These customers often compare prices and do not like extra margins. The fastest moving category in the web store is short dress, followed by saris, lehangas, skirts and gowns, although footwear and accessories do not comprise much of the sales. The portal also has a very small but growing category for menswear with a range of shirts and jackets. On the whole, ethnic and westernwear have been contributing 50:50 share to the business.
Mydesignersales.com also offers upcoming designers the opportunity to design corporate uniforms for companies. Bhaskar confesses, “Quitting our jobs and starting a company was a big challenge. It was a new experience for us. We took every challenge as an opportunity to learn something. We wanted to deliver the best to our customers. Logistics was the major challenge. Also as a start-up business, trying to get good human resources was diffi cult, especially when it came to getting the right talent on board.” Moreover,
convincing the upcoming designers about an opportunity for them online is another ongoing challenge, as most of them have issues with their designs being copied or not selling after 60 days. In order to mitigate this gap, Bhaskar has devised different slab orders, such as ‘drop shipment’ model and ‘sale or return’ model while providing end-to-end services to designers to tackle these issues.
Besides these, some of the other challenges include the issues of availability of different sizes as most designers create collections in one size. Mydesignersales.com also offers madeto- measure options depending on the designer. There is a minuscule number of orders that comes back due to size issues. For this reason, CoD is the most popular mode of payment on e-commerce websites. Here, the drop shipment model works well with designers. The designer shares their collection with mydesginersales.com, where the garments are photographed and marketed online and then shipped back to the designers, who have the option to sell it through their outlets or boutiques as well.
However, the only drawback here is when the garment gets sold by the designer while another customer places an order online then the portal has to refund the customer’s money or offer a discount on a purchase. The packaging is also made attractive using eco-friendly and waterproof bags and boxes. Garments are shipped from mydesignersales.com’s warehouse located in Bengaluru.
“We believe that it is the customer who owns the business; they can make it or break it,” states Bhaskar. “We don’t have added charges; we keep a fl at rate. We want the designers to keep their price since they know the kind of effort, talent and process that has gone into their collections,” he concludes.
